There’s an entire generation of women who have been sold a specific lie.

Sixty years after the second wave feminism of women like Gloria Steinem, the idea that women must have a career that looks just like a man’s in order to not squander their brains and talents still exists. The daughters of the women who grew up under Steinem’s brand of feminism understand that there are undeniable benefits of having children but have not shaken the sense that they would be giving up something at least as good, if not better, when sacrificing a career.

In such an environment, a woman suffers a bit of a whiplash when she finds that the same career standard applied to men and women is significantly harder for her to meet.

U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) is leading a bipartisan group of lawmakers in advocating for remote voting options for congresswomen who have recently given birth. Parading her newborn around the Capitol, Pettersen is giving floor speeches and TV interviews to emphasize what she sees as the absurdity of the requirement for in-person voting.

Many Republicans are helping Pettersen in her mission, but those who oppose it are generally focusing on the importance of deliberative, in-person work for Congress to run as intended. While a true critique, it is telling that no Republican seems willing to state the obvious – that it would be better for Pettersen to honor her own biology and step out of this intense role in the first place.

Obviously, there would be major career implications by such a move. Pettersen would not necessarily have to quit any political work, but she would certainly have to choose a less glamorous job, possibly moving to part-time work.

I’ve experienced those career costs myself. Choosing to be present in my own motherhood has looked like tanking engagement on X, irregular writing gigs, and dimming connections with glitzy opportunities in the D.C. orbit.

Such sacrifices look different for every mother, and some women work jobs far more compatible with raising children well. But women who are honest with themselves about the tangible costs of motherhood enjoy far greater contentment in their new life than it seems Pettersen does as she essentially has a public identity crisis about her new role and its conflict with her old one.

Republicans are rallying around Pettersen, telling themselves that her grandstanding is about supporting mothers and babies, a worthy pursuit for the “party of family values.”

But the GOP’s inability to assert anything that stinks of gender roles has gotten them into trouble before. Even the right’s opposition to women in the military usually centers on how unfair it is to lower standards for women in combat roles. Yet sending our daughters and mothers to die in wars is an unnatural and shameful indictment of our country. The lower physical capacities of women are merely a tangible manifestation of the unique roles of males and females. It’s perfectly fine that women can’t make the same fitness standards as men – they weren’t meant to do so.

In the same way, the ludicrousness on display as Pettersen holds her tiny newborn before hundreds of TV cameras is a perfect example of why young mothers often change career paths upon entering motherhood. Congress making a remote voting exception for her merely puts a Band-Aid over the problem of mothers seeking to work in the same way as males.

A woman’s biological capability to have babies is not an accident; instead, it is a pronouncement of her created role to prioritize bearing and sustaining children, even if she can’t run the country while doing so.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: YouTube/ABC News